The Burning Air (26 page)

53

“
W
HAT?” SAID WILL, looking at their stricken faces. “Tell me!”

Rowan fumbled for the right words to explain that in the time it had taken Will to summon them, the police had gone from an institution of trust to a source of fear. The words did not come; he had to let the torch tell the inexpressible narrative. The beam glanced over the shattered skull and came to rest on the stained cricket bat. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” said Will. “What
happened
?”

Like actors taking their cue, Kerry and Felix emerged from the cottage into the waiting spotlight. Now he was holding her hands behind her back. Rowan had never seen anything on Will’s face compared to the look of hatred he shot Kerry; he recognized from his own reaction the way Will made a split-second decision to file Kerry away, deal with her later, and understood the effort it must have taken him.

“Rowan? Soph? Please, what happened here?” He began to stroke Sophie’s hair but without tenderness; there was something compulsive about the repetitive gesture, reminiscent of a man pacing the floor. She clapped her hand over his to still it.

“I didn’t mean to kill him!” burst Jake.

“Jake?”
said Will in disbelief.

“He
had
to,” said Tara, who had dredged some composure from somewhere. “Matt had us all cornered inside and he was threatening Edie. Jake came up from behind and knocked him out. He could have killed her, Will. He could have killed all of us. He’d got hold of your blowtorch. He was aiming it at us. He was going to use it on Edie.” Will blanched and closed his eyes; he could have been about to faint or gathering strength, it was impossible to tell. It was impossible to tell anything about anyone anymore, and probably always would be. Rowan had a sudden and desperate urge to lie down and close his own eyes.

“Was it . . . but . . . Why would Matt want to hurt Edie? I thought Kerry took her?”

Oh, hell, thought Rowan. He doesn’t know. He didn’t know who Matt really was because I sent him away to phone the police.

“Matt wasn’t who he said he was,” said Tara. “He and Kerry knew each other. They did it together.”

“What the
fuck
?” said Will. His eyes snapped open, their focus on Kerry intense. She hid her face behind filthy hands.

“He was . . . someone from a long time ago,” began Rowan. “Someone who had a grudge against the family.”

“A grudge?” echoed Will. “Against
this
family? But why would—”

“Fucking hell, have we got time for this now?” shouted Tara. “The police are going to be here any second.”

“I’ll fill you in on the walk back,” Sophie told Will.

“What’s going to happen when they get here?” said Jake.

“We’re going to decide what to do now,” said Tara. It had not, until then, occurred to Rowan that there might be more than one course of action.

“Don’t worry, Jakey. The police will handle it,” said Will. “We’ll tell them everything, whatever it is. They’ll understand. We’d better go.”

He turned on his heel, shepherding his wife back in the direction of the barn. Rowan had to break into a trot to keep pace with them.

Tara and Jake tottered behind as though in a three-legged race, she evidently as reluctant to let go of her child as Sophie was hers.

“No way, Will,” she said. “Will! Slow down. Let’s talk about this. What will they do to him? He’s
thirteen
.”

“You’re not seriously suggesting that we hide this from the police?” said Will without breaking his stride. “We’ve got a dead man on our land. It’s not the kind of thing you can just sweep under the carpet. This needs to be dealt with.” He stopped and turned to look at Kerry. “This woman and her . . . whatever he is, they took my daughter away. How would you feel if it had been your child?”

“It’s my child
now,
” said Tara. “It’s exactly because my child is involved that I want us to handle this between ourselves. I can’t let him go through court.”

Sophie took Will’s side, but her voice lacked conviction. “If we tell them about Matt, about his history with the family, the police will work it out. Who are they going to believe, the abductor with the fake name or the blameless teenage boy with all his family around him?”

“Hardly blameless, Sophie,” said Tara urgently. “Not in the eyes of the law. He’s got a record.”

Sophie sighed and shifted Edie on her shoulder. “Oh, Tara, that’s completely different. He was being bullied, there were extenuating circumstances . . .”

“Sophie, we’re not talking about a bit of dope, here. We can’t get Jon Slingsby to turn a blind eye to this, can we? This will be a different force, people who don’t know Jake, his history. This is serious, this is . . .”

The word “murder” hung above their heads like a guillotine.

•   •   •

Rowan felt his daughters’ disagreement as a stitch, savage in his breast. He was almost grateful that he could not catch his breath to intervene. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this. It might be different for those born into a different class, they might be equipped with the resources for this sort of thing, but it was not the MacBride way.

Will looked over his shoulder at Tara. “There’s been enough anarchy already this weekend. The police need to come and take Kerry away. They’ll just talk to Jake, we’ll all tell them what happened, and they won’t press charges.”

“Don’t be so fucking naive! Of
course
they will. Whatever, there’ll be some kind of process . . . they’ll still want it all to go through the proper channels. It’s obvious to us that he didn’t do anything wrong, but they’re outsiders, they don’t
know
him. They don’t know his background, everything he’s been through. Come on, Will, I know how much you care about Jake. We can let them deal with Kerry without dragging Jake into it, without telling them about Matt.”

Jake remained still, but flared his nostrils like a frightened horse about to buck. The way Will looked at him, heavy with the kind of tenderness one would expect from a father to his own son, showed that Tara had gotten through to him. Rowan knew Will was forcing down his principles in favor of something truer and closer to home, because something similar was happening to him.

“What about Kerry?” said Will. “I take it
she
knows, the way you’re all talking so freely in front of her. What’s to stop her blurting it all out?”

“I wouldn’t do that, sweartogod,” spluttered Kerry, then yelped as Felix tightened his grip on her wrists and said, “Forgive me if we don’t exactly take you on your word on that one.”

“Please don’t tell the police on me!” said Jake. “I only wanted to stop him hurting Edie, Auntie Sophie! I mean, I really
liked
Matt.”

Tara saw the glance Sophie and Will exchanged and pounced on it. “Any of us would have done the same thing if we’d been in the right place. You know you would have. Your boys would have done it, if they’d been here, if they’d been Jake’s age, if they’d been strong enough. Dad, tell her, please? Tell them?”

Five faces turned toward Rowan; even Will, so assured, now stood in temporary deference to the head of the family. Over the years Rowan had been accountable for hundreds of children and yet he now understood that he had never before come close to knowing the meaning of responsibility.

“Just . . . will you all just bloody
stop
for a second, and give me a chance to
think
!” he shouted, digging his heels into the earth. They were at the top of the garden. From here, the drop to the lawn looked almost vertical. Rowan stood, aware of how pathetic he sounded and desperately willing his warring thoughts to coalesce. He had an ingrained deference to authority but knew the police were far from infallible. Dare he trust them with his grandson’s future?

Everything Jake had was going into keeping him upright. He was old enough to try to be strong, but lacked the sophistication to disguise the effort. Rowan saw in the boy the man he was turning into—responsible and considerate and accomplished—all the more impressive when one considered the disadvantaged circumstance of his birth. How could they derail him from this path, only so recently established?

The growl of an engine sounded in the far distance. Another thought began swiftly to crystallize. Say they did tell the police everything that had happened, say they gave Jake up, showed them the body and told them who Matt really was, what then? Their investigations would probe why he had borne this vendetta against the family, and who knew then what might come out? Lydia had written that she cared less about public opinion than her children’s but she had not seemed to realize that for her actions to be made public would necessarily be for her children to learn of them. If Jake’s golden future were tarnished, it would take the MacBride name with it. Rowan knew, somewhere deeper than principle or pride, what they must do.

“We can deal with this as a family,” he said as they approached the barn. “We don’t need them to know that Jake was involved in any of it.”

There were sharp inhalations, sobs, a dry scraped gasp that might have come from Jake himself.

“But
how
will we—”

“I’m
thinking,
Will.”

Light had caught up with sound now: blue lights along the lane turned naked branches into steel. Even allowing for a slower than normal speed, they would be here in three minutes.

The family entered the kitchen through doors that had remained wide open. Sophie made straight for the baby monitor on the table. It registered no sound but she pressed it to her ear like a seashell. “I can hear them,” she said, “I can hear them breathing,” and she sank into the chair at the head of the table. Under the strip light of the kitchen Rowan noticed for the first time the extent of their dishevelment. Kerry’s contamination was far worse than had been apparent at the cottage, a stippling of blood over her skin and God-knew-what embedded in her dark jersey.

“Wash your hands and face, will you?” Rowan asked her. Felix marched her to the kitchen sink; the suds foamed pink.

“Let me get this straight,” said Will. “If we’re going to somehow shield Jake from all this, how are we going to explain away the dead bloke up at the cottage?”

The values by which Rowan had raised his family had been destroyed. He had minutes, perhaps seconds, to come up with a new set and instill them in his children. Sheer force of circumstance was his inspiration. “We’re not,” he said.

Will was aghast. “Rowan, you’re not serious.”

“They’re looking for a baby, not a man.”

“What if they want to question him?” pressed Will.

“We’ll say it was crossed wires, that he’s still out looking. Once they see that Edie’s here, why would they? What reason will they have to go combing the outbuildings?”

“But he
will
still be there,” said Tara.

“Yes . . .” Don’t make me say it, thought Rowan. It’s bad enough that it has to be done. Please let’s not put
this
into words.

“We
can’t,
” said Will, but his voice was already slack with defeat.

“For Jake,” Sophie said. “Tara’s right. Our boys would have done the same. I can’t bear the police crawling all over our lives.”

“Do I have a choice?” said Will.

“Darling, please, don’t be like that,” said Sophie. “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it together. You’re as much part of this family as anyone.”

Will laced his fingers together and pressed the heels of his hands deep into his eyes. “Fine. Well, not fine, but . . . Jesus
Christ
. What a mess. Look, I’m going to check on the bunker, OK? I’ll be right back,” he said.

The car outside grew closer. Rowan guessed it would be about a minute away.

“Oh no,” said Sophie. “Jake, your
top
.” The boy had a smear of blood on his white T-shirt in the shape of his beloved Nike swoosh.

“Oh fuck!” said Jake. “What am I going to do? They’re going to put me in prison!” He pulled off his jacket and went to take off the T-shirt, all elbows, tangling himself up in his own clothes like a toddler, and getting just as distressed.

“Tara, he needs to go upstairs,” said Rowan. “It’s not fair to ask him to stay calm in front of the police.”

“I don’t want to be on my own! Mum?”

“Grandpa’s right, Jakey. Just while we talk to the police. Go and wait in my room. Stay there until we tell you to come down.”

“What if they come after me?” he said. “What if Kerry tells on me?”

“I promise, I won’t,” said Kerry. “Felix, I
promise
I won’t.”

“Short of gagging her, I can’t think what we’re going to do with her,” said Tara, as if Kerry wasn’t there.

“I swear on my life,” said Kerry. “I brought the baby back, didn’t I? That shows you can trust me.”

“It shows nothing of the sort,” barked Rowan.

“What if I get her out of the way, too?” said Felix. “She can’t say anything if she’s not there.”

Rowan thought hard. The story that was taking shape in his mind depended on having Kerry around. It depended on trusting her. To accidentally report an abduction was a believable parental overreaction. To explain Matt away would be difficult, but possible. But for the accused abductor to disappear as well was unequivocally suspicious. Or was it? The clean lines of innocence and guilt had blurred and dissolved. Who was he, now, to say what looked suspicious and what didn’t?

“
Please
don’t make me go upstairs on my own,” said Jake, dangerously close to losing control.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” said Rowan, temporarily diverted from the problem of Kerry. “It’s not a choice.”

Tara got up to escort her son and overrode her tears to speak. “Darling, I’ll be up with you as soon as I can. We’re going to take care of it all, OK?” Rowan and Tara stood at the kitchen door, watched Jake climb the stairs. He seemed to grow smaller and younger with each tread. At the top of the stairs, he met Will coming in the opposite direction. Will put a hand on his nephew’s arm, drew him into a brief hug, and whispered something in the boy’s ear that made him gulp, nod, and hold his uncle even tighter. As Will descended the staircase, Jake paused to study his face in the landing mirror before disappearing through Rowan’s bedroom door.